


Improvise

by thebravelittlemonkey



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Humor, reluctant bromance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebravelittlemonkey/pseuds/thebravelittlemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ward specializes in combat; Fitz in commentary. As it turns out, the two don't go together quite as well as expected. An interpretation of the episode 7 promo video and photos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Improvise

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick bit to pass the time until next week. This is purely a light piece, without a huge narrative effort. I had initially made this as a dialogue post only, but then I suck, so I added stuff in the middle. One day I will write under 500 words. One day.

“An abandoned warehouse? Really? I mean honestly, you’d think bad guys would get sick of the cliché. Or at least the smell. Has something died in here?” The Scotsman took a good whiff of the air and immediately regretted it, trying to cough out the bacteria he had surely just ingested. “That’s…yup, no something has definitely died in here. Mother of God, it smells like Simmons’ side of the lab when she’s—”

“Fitz!” Ward interrupted harshly. “Could you can it on the commentary? We’re _supposed_  to be sneaking in, remember?” 

“Course I remember!” Fitz returned, earning another piercing glare from his partner before he dropped his voice down to a whisper. “There’s not much else to remember after all. They didn’t exactly burden us with an abundance of information on this one,” he scoffed jogging a few steps to keep up with Ward’s long strides as he shifted his pack with an audible huff of annoyance.

Another glare.

“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t take any of our equipment. I’d feel a bit more prepared if I at least had my own tools, not this hardware store rubbish,” he continued, giving the bag another heft for emphasis. “Have you even got a gun on you?”

“HQ was specific: no equipment, no uniforms, nothing that ties us to S.H.I.E.L.D. in any way. That includes firearms,” Ward answered in a low whisper, giving the persistent engineer only a fraction of his attention while he tried to listen for the footsteps he could have sworn were there a moment ago. They were on the second floor now, overlooking the warehouse floor. It was the perfect spot to scope out the area, but the churn of machinery behind him made picking out the soft click of a gun almost impossible. And Fitz certainly wasn’t helping.

“At least we could have taken the night-night pistol.” 

“That’s got S.H.I.E.L.D. tech written all over it.”

“The shock grenades?”

“No.”

“Stun rod?”

“No.”

“Oh come one, we couldn’t even take a simple handgun?”

“No.”

“You’re telling me we haven’t got a single handgun without a bloody S.H.I.E.L.D. logo stamped on it?” he asked, smug sarcasm lacing every word. 

Silence.

“Wait…we don’t really have that printed on every gun do we?”

“We don’t need them. I’m a specialist remember? If we run into trouble, I’ll improvise,” he replied, confident and concise. Fitz was giving him a rather skeptical look that he would have liked to contend, but Ward decided against it for the sake of the mission and his sanity. In the brief moment of silence, he strained his ears to hear above the grinding of metal, wheezing of steam, and rattle of chains. Wait a minute…

“Well if we run into trouble, we can just pretend we’re repairmen!” Fitz suggested bitterly. “I mean, you look the part, and I actually  _am_  the part, so together we could—”

“Fitz!”

“What?” His Scottish accent weighed heavily into the syllable, and Ward struggled to conceal his frustration. “I’m just saying we could—” 

This time it was a hand that stopped his voice as Ward abandoned verbal cues all together. He pulled Fitz down to a crouched position beside the ladder, hand still cupped over his mouth as he carefully leaned over the edge to confirm his suspicion. A man in military garb appeared down below, toting a good sized semi-automatic, as he circled around on what must be a patrol. By the way he casually strolled through, Ward guessed he, miraculously, hadn’t spotted them yet. With the element of surprise on his side, Ward decided he would just wait for him to pass, then jump down to the first level to take care of the guard while Fitz waited up top. He conveyed this plan with a short series of hand gestures, but Fitz just furrowed his brow in an expression that looked all too familiar to Ward: s _peak English_. 

“Just stay here,” he commanded in a terse whisper, relinquishing his grip on the scientist and slipping down the ladder in a clean slide. He landed with a skillfully muffled thud and Fitz, for his part, remained perfectly quiet as he watched from above.

With his back to Fitz, Ward slowly crept along the concrete wall, heading in the direction of the guard who had passed a moment ago. Ward was unconcerned by his lack of a firearm, he knew he could take the man down in seconds. His main concern was keeping the guard from shooting off any rounds before he knocked him unconscious. Gunshots didn’t bode well for stealth.

What he should have been concerned for, however, was guard number two.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The question was only halfway out of the man’s mouth before Ward’s right hook collided with his jaw. The bald guard stumbled back a step, but recovered quickly, returning two swift jabs that Ward blocked with his forearms. The guard made for his pistol, but Ward was too fast, twisting the weapon out of his grip as the guard’s pained shouts echoed through the warehouse.

“I take it we’re not going with the repairman bit?” Fitz called down, leaning slightly over the edge of the ladder to get a better look at the commotion.

Ducking under a wild swing, Ward gave the discarded gun a swift kick to send it skittering across the floor. “What do you think?” he shot back, taking a hit to the side before delivering a solid blow to the man’s jugular, momentarily dazing him.

“Right…well…oh look out!” The first guard had returned at the sound of the fight, and was now taking aim at Ward with a very lethal looking AK47. Grant reacted just in time, throwing the dazed guard into the other to buy himself a precious second. Before they could recover, he grabbed the barrel of the AK47 and yanked it forward, but the other man pulled back with equal force, locking them in a deadly standstill with the weapon between them.

“Bet the night-night gun would come in handy right now,” Fitz observed, resting a hand against the railing as he waited patiently.

Guard number two was on his feet once more, wrapping an arm around Ward’s throat as he pulled him away from his partner.

“Or the shock grenades…”

Struggling for air, Ward slammed the semi-automatic into the guard’s face, releasing his grip and using his free hand to pry the second guard off of him.

“Even the stun rod really.”

Two sharp elbow jabs to the gut were enough to loosen the guard’s grip, and now Ward finally had air coming into his lungs. “You’re not,” he grunted, throwing another punch at his assailant, “Helping.”

“Well you’re the one who said you could improvise,” he shot back, waiting for Agent Ward to wow him with his ‘specialist’ skills. Honestly, take away the tech and these field agent really were useless.

That’s when Ward spotted it: a short length of chain left dangling over the side of an oil drum. “I am,” he gritted back, grabbing the end of the chain with one hand and whipping around to catch the first guard in the face with the other end. 

“Ooo….nice….get the…get the other one!” Fitz called down supportively, now on his feet with the excitement of the action.

Ward had the chain wrapped around the second guard’s throat in seconds, pulling it tight against his back as he tried to choke him into unconsciousness, still facing the first guard’s semi-automatic.

“Kick him! Kick him in the shin!”

The specialist did in fact kick him, though not in the shin. Leaning his weight against the guard behind him, he delivered a powerful blow to his solar plexus that left the man stumbling, winded, and incredibly angry. While Ward flipped the man behind him over his shoulders and into a resounded concussion, the first guard turned his sights upward. 

A wild spray of bullets rebounded off the railing next to Fitz, eliciting a rather high-pitched cry of alarm. “Oi! What’re you shooting at me for? He’s the one hitting people!”

A loud clang of metal silenced both the bullets and the shouting as the guard collapsed to the floor, sporting a head wound that threatened some amount of brain damage. Ward stood poised over him, triumphantly grasping a short metal pole, still tensed and ready for another assailant. “That’s right,” he proclaimed to the very unconscious guard, slowly regaining his breathing. “I’m the one hitting people.”

Neither guard moved a muscle to protest, and it was clear after a few moments that neither of them would be waking up in the near future. Satisfied, Ward dropped the lead pipe on top of the bald man’s body and motioned for Fitz to come down.

“Well that certainly could have gone better,” he noted, hopping down the last step of the ladder awkwardly. 

“Oh and you’re the expert on combat now?” Ward returned, cracking his neck and testing his side for any bruised ribs.

“Well…no…I mean, I…I do  _make_  all the combat weapons you know…so it’s not like I couldn’t give you a few pointers and…” Fitz trailed off into silence as he saw the look Grant was giving him. “Right, well….I’ll leave that bit to you then,” he concluded, setting down his pack on the ground.

“Good,” Ward said, “And no time for breaks, we need to keep moving. That was sure to raise some alarms.”

Fitz ignored the command, unzipping the bag to dig around in his meager supplies with mysterious purpose.

“Fitz.”

“Yea, I know, just hold on a minute!”

“Fitz we need to —”

“Here!” Fitz announced, dropping something into his hand before zipping the bag up again. Ward looked down to see a medium sized wrench resting in his palm.

“For next time,” he explained, “I think the repairmen bit could have worked.” Ward gave him a dubious expression, but kept the wrench on hand.

“At least I’ll have something to hit them with when it doesn’t.”


End file.
